Page 50 - RADC Bulletin 2019

Ex PROTON SERPENT
LCpl Larwood RADC
Ex PROTON SERPENT is a two week
AMS Ski competition in Serre Chevalier, South France. Teams from all corners of the AMS come together for Alpine (regular skiing as seen in all holiday brochures) and Nordic skiing (not seen in regular holiday brochures, since it’s much less romantic). Our DPHC(SN) team consisted of quite
the variety – Maj Brown as team leader, Maj McCammon and Capt Prowse-Jones. Also including 2IC Sgt Sugden, LCpl Naulls and myself. Just to spice things
up and ensure we had the most awesome team for 2019, we asked Sgt Brown, from Catterick Garrison mental health team,
and novice skier SAC May, who primarily works from RAF Leeming, to join us. SAC May and I were new to the sport, whilst Capt Prowse-jones, Sgt Brown and LCpl Naulls had dabbled in the past. The rest
of the DPHC (SN) team, as far as I am concerned, were professional ski athletes, at least when it came to Nordic anyway. Maj McCammon can probably do a full lap of the Nordic course before I’ve even skied 100 yards. But no one in my team beat how many bruises I got by the time these 2 weeks were up. Gold medals all round!
So, to begin this journey we started at Catterick garrison. Some of our team had already travelled from Northern Ireland to meet us, but not all of us knew each other until we met on Saturday 26th January. As per military fashion we become pretty good pals fairly quickly, we bonded strongly on the mini bus over multiple games of ‘Heads Up’ on our mobile phones. With Euro Tunnel delays, it took us approximately 20 hours
to get from A to B, eventually arriving at our snowy destination on Sunday afternoon. Once we arrived, we quickly got our skis and boots before settling into our new home for 2 weeks. Our new home was one large villa split between the boys and the girls, naturally the girls got the bigger half. Once unpacked, we headed out for our
first team night out to a brilliant restaurant, purely based on the fact it served crepes
for dinner. Here is where we all ‘practiced’ our GCSE French skills... This might explain how I ended up having crepes for my dinner instead of salmon and asparagus. After a lovely evening out stretching our legs, the team began a ritual of meeting in the girl’s kitchen for briefings – first brief of the Ex gave us an insight as to what to expect during our time at Serre Chevalier, such
as what kit is required for both types of skiing events, or what the training schedule entails over the next couple of weeks.
Most importantly, these daily briefs were to discuss what we planned to have for dinner the following day.
During our first brief we honoured 2 members of our team as head chefs, basically we took the word of the two that said they could cook. We could all shop though, so we took to the local super market stocking up on all the goodies, but also taking in our surroundings, getting to know the area.
Our first day on the slopes, as was
the schedule for most of our two weeks, consisted of a rotation of Alpine and Nordic lessons. For some of us, myself included,
it was our first ever time on the slopes. So in order for the instructors to place us in groups of agility, we all had a test on an introductory beginners’ slope. Unfortunately, this meant the team being split into 3 separate groups. For the novice group,
our sessions were filled with laughter from
48 RADC BULLETIN 2019
ADVENTUROUS TRAINING